The Secret Journey

by Paul Christian

  “Please.”

  Steady.

  “Yes.”

  “Please.”

  Harder.

  Yeah, do it harder, honey, do it faster. Do it honey, and feel my tongue as you stroke your clit, ready now, feel the orgasm building up. Feel your womb get tight, feel your cunt throb, feel your clit swell to bursting. Just because it’s tender doesn’t mean it’s not intense. Do it, honey, give it to me, legs spread wide and wider, get your cunt open, get your soul open, thrust your hips up, make yourself your own sacramental sex altar, let me worship at your temple, let me take you where you so much need to go.

  “Yes.”

  “Please.”

  Say it.

  “Yes.”

  “Please.”

  Stroke it.

  “Yes.”

  “Please.”

  Fuck it.

  Oh yeah, honey. Harder now and faster. I want it for you so much, I’m going to make you come so hard, just let it all go because you can’t hold on to it any longer, just let the pleasure sweep your body, let your cunt explode, just be it, feel it, do it, fuck it. Can you see yourself as I see you, like Eve, the original woman, the original beauty, passion made flesh and flesh made passion. Do you know how precious you are to me honey, do you know how much I need you right now? Come on honey, give it up for me, pump your hips, get your legs even wider and give it up. It’s coming now, coming fast, your orgasm is there, right there honey, and it’s going to happen right now.

  Now! Now honey, release it, ride it, scream it out, let it consume you, consecrate you, purify you. And you are so beautiful like this, honey, you are my everything right now. Pump it hard, honey, feel the contractions, feel the rush, feel how right it is like this. You are your cunt now, honey. Feel the tingle in your nipples, feel the throb in your clit. Breathe for me, honey, in and out, deep and regular. God you are so beautiful. Breathe and feel it, shudder through it, buck and spasm. Be all woman for me, be all women. Show me how you are when you let go. Do it. Now!

  And when you’re done, when you’re finished, once every silver streak of pleasure has been milked from your contracting womb, once every last thrill and tingle has come through your body, then come down for me, honey. Let your body go limp, let your muscles relax and let me see you in that beautiful state of after-orgasm, your skin glowing, flushed, your eyes lidded heavy now in the aftermath, the smell of your sex filling the room. Breathe deep, honey. Let it wash you away, and you can lie there and feel me next to you.

  Let me brush the hair from your eyes and hold you, honey. Let me lie with you a little while. Tell me how it was honey, and kiss me with affection. Let me talk about what I’ve learned from life, let me listen to your stories. Let me hear your heartbeat with my head against your breast.

  Can I get you something, honey? Water, wine, milk or mangoes? Ice cream, whipped cream, or simply whipped until you cream? Pain or pleasure, lace or leather, tell me your favourite. Food, flesh or fantasy, there’s nothing I won’t bring for you. Are you still surprised, honey, that I can choose to be tender? I’m a real person honey, I’m more than just words on the page, more than just a cookie-cut character. I have depths you haven’t dreamt of. Tell me your desire, let me make it real for you. Is it real enough yet? No, not yet, but getting realer all the time. You’re still there and I’m still here, but we’re getting closer. We’re in no rush, honey, we have time, here in the private darkness of our steamy summer night. Here at the beginning of our road.

  The Teacher

  It’s hard being a teacher, a high school teacher. What makes it hard is the girls, the women. When they start they’re girls, gawky and shy, not quite co-ordinated, not yet comfortable with bodies which have transformed themselves in a few short years. They arrive as minor-niners with braces and bubblegum, playing dress-up with themselves the way they used to with Barbie. They giggle about boys, they flirt and fight and cry in response to floods of hormones they can’t control, bringing on feelings they don’t understand. They struggle through crushes and jealousies. They dream of their first dance, first kiss, first touch, first time. And then, a sudden four years later, they’re women.

  Young women to be sure, with their lives in front of them, but women, not girls. They know the power of their sexuality, and dress-up has been replaced with style. Their bodies are firm and lithe, fully formed and fertile. They know how to get what they want, most of them, and the ones who don’t yet will learn soon enough. They are beautiful, in that first blush of womanhood. They are ripe, and they know it, and they advertise it to the world, knowing the wolves will fight it out to see who’s going to win the prize.

  Boys lag girls, it’s just the way they’re built. They come into school still children and when they leave they aren't yet men. Young women like older men for just that reason. They're attracted to maturity, experience, confidence, authority. Better to say they respond to such men. They can’t help it, any more than men can help responding to women who are young and beautiful. It’s not a choice, not an acquired taste, it’s instinct. Basic instinct.

  And if you’re an older man but not yet too old, if you’re fit and tall, if you’re passionate about what you teach, if you connect with your students on their level, then it’s inevitable that attraction will happen. I’ve had Valentine’s cards appear in homework, answered the phone to silence and a giggle and the click-buzz of a hang-up, seen my name carved in a heart on the window ledge in the library. I’ve had secret notes mailed to my house and had other girls sidle up to tell me someone “likes me” in just that certain way.

  It takes self discipline to resist when they sit in the front row, looking up at me with their eyes big, drinking you in as you stand there being mature, experienced, confident and authoritative. It takes more when they linger after class to ask a question, spark a discussion, share that precious three minutes before they have to run home to their private fantasy where the teacher/student veil is pierced.

  It’s just a crush people say, parents and relatives, friends and guidance counselors, as if that makes the emotions less important. That’s wrong, so wrong. Emotions are emotions, and if crushes are fleeting, capricious, always ill thought out and often ill advised, they are nevertheless powerful. I used to say, “Just a crush,” and sidestep the shy glances, the awkward advances. What else could I do? I dated women in my own age group, women whose sexualities are more advanced than kiss-and-fumble, women who appreciate the side of me that I keep strictly separate from PTA meetings and teacher’s union working groups. And then Suzanne Smith killed herself on the last day of school, and her note told the world it was because she realized she could never have me.

  A thing like that stays with you. Sue was quiet and studious and pretty, with a sly sense of humour that went beyond her years. It’s the smarter ones who are most dangerous, the ones most likely to feel cerebral kinship across the generation gap. I teach creative writing, the last class of the day, and perhaps I should have recognized her attraction by the way she lingered afterwards to ask questions. Perhaps I should have seen it in what she wrote.

  Her stories were longer than most, and far better written than even the average professional can produce. They tended to romantic themes. She left the last one she wrote in her locker when she went home that day of school, having cleaned everything else out. She titled it The Millwheel, a well crafted tale of a young woman and the miller’s son, her secret lover. They meet in a secluded nook by the millpond, and though nothing more than a kiss occurs you can feel the passion lurking just beneath the words. Her parents find out and forbid her to see him because he is beneath her social station. She refuses to end it, and they arrange to have him drafted into the army. He goes to war and she waits, until news comes that he’s been killed. In despair she dives into the millpond and swims until she’s swept into the raceway, dragged down and under the churning wheel, killed in an instant. Her final thought is of her lover, her wish that his soul will return to his father’s mill, so they can
always be together.

  I wept when I read her story, it was just that good. What I didn’t know was that she’d written it for me, only for me. She had laid it all out for me, as plain as can be, and though I’m good at spotting student crushes I’d never even guessed at hers. She laid her heart before me, bared her soul, and what did I do? Graded it A+ in red pen and wrote 'Excellent work, Suzanne. The use of the millwheel both to symbolize life and to foreshadow of death is very powerful. Your characterization is beautiful. Best of luck in university next year.'

  Suzanne never got less than an A. She had a dozen scholarships from a dozen top ranked schools to choose from. She could have had any career she chose, anywhere she chose, travelled, learned, loved, grown, raised children and grandchildren. She threw it all away because I didn’t return an attraction I didn’t even know existed, that I couldn’t have returned if I had known. I remember the way she hugged me on that last day of senior year, the last day of her life. She held me tighter and longer than she should have, my first and last hint at what lay beneath her shy and quiet surface, and I kept my professional distance and congratulated her and shook her hand and wished her well.

  Perhaps I gave her some paternal good advice, I can’t remember. I do remember so clearly when her mother called. “This is Sue Smith’s mom,” she said, and then she burst into tears. Now I bring flowers to her grave every year. I kept teaching, what else could I do? I love my work, even when it hurts. I still get Valentines and carefully penned notes on purple stationary. I still sidestep them, but more carefully now, and with compassion. Never again have I said the words, “Just a crush.”

  Four Septembers after Suzanne, Julie arrived in that same class. She was tall and tight bodied, adolescent lean with high, firm breasts and long, long legs. She wore ripped jeans and torn t-shirts, and one or the other was always black, tight enough to show her figure, loose enough to show she didn’t care. Her attitude towards school skirted the border between bored and amused. She tolerated the system because she had to, but she made it clear she didn’t buy our line about how important the process was.

  Julie was as smart as Suzanne or maybe smarter, but her work was habitually late and typically sloppy, though she’d throw in the occasional A+ effort just to prove she could do it, if she wanted to. Most of the time she read a book in class, making her own use of the time we made her spend at a schoolroom desk. She was a reader, gaining admittance through words to worlds she couldn’t yet access any other way. She was doing what she wanted now, not waiting for some magical after-time, after graduation, after university, after landing the career, the promotion, the directorship. I had no idea what she did after school, no idea what her home life was like, but her writing spoke volumes, themed dangerous and dark. She sat in the back where Suzanne had sat in the front, and she never lingered to talk after class.

  Until one day she did.

  It was a Friday in early October, a cool and crisp day. The bell rang at four and the class evaporated in a babble of young voices. The usual handful stayed behind with questions or problems to address. I dealt with each one, made notes in my log where I had to follow something up. Julie was last in line.

  “Julie.” I looked up from my desk, gave her the standard quick smile of invitation to tell her it was her turn. She didn’t say anything for a moment, just watched the previous student go out the door.

  “Julie?” She was still watching the door as it swung shut again. The latch clacked closed, and then she knelt down beside my chair. “I want you to teach me, sir.” Her voice was nervous, her face determined. She knew what she was doing, it scared her, she was doing it anyway.

  My blood ran cold. On the surface it was an innocent enough thing to say. I am after all her teacher, and all my students call me “Sir”, as they call all male teachers “Sir” and all female teachers “Ma’am”. Completely innocent, except for the way she was kneeling, except for the tone of her voice when she said it, the way she emphasized “Sir”, in just that way. She knew, somehow, and she was acting on what she knew to get what she wanted. I just stared at her, unable to speak until she said the words I dreaded, the words I somehow knew were coming.

  “I was at the Club on Saturday night, sir. I saw you there.” She put her hands behind her neck, fingers laced together, raising those high, firm breasts to me, offering them. I ever so carefully didn’t look, but before I didn’t look I saw her nipples, standing hard and proud, jutting evidence of her arousal. They weren’t a good sign. She knew about the Club. The Club with the capital implicit. The Club was in the city, a good two hours from here. The Club was where my other life was lived out, in a world far darker than this quiet little community could ever imagine.

  And here was Julie, little Julie. How did she… how could she know?

  It didn’t matter. “Julie, stand up.” I said, in my best teacher voice. It brooked no misunderstanding or disobedience. I couldn’t allow this to continue.

  “Yes sir,” she said, and stood, with her hands still clasped in the back of her neck.

  “And put your hands down.” I glanced out the windows, afraid someone might have already seen what she’d done. Innocence, in a case like this, is no defence at all.

  “Yes sir.” She put them down by her sides and stood there, obediently, quietly, waiting. She was doing exactly what she was told, which was exactly the wrong thing, under the circumstances.

  “Julie,” I said, my voice quieter. “This can’t happen. You’re too young…”

  “I’m old enough, it's perfectly legal.”

  “I didn’t say it wasn’t legal I said you were too young.”

  “I’m not too young to be your student, sir.”

  “Not this way, Julie.”

  “In every way, sir.”

  “Julie…” I groped for words. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Yes I do sir. I saw you at the Club…”

  I held up my hand, my stomach tightening. “And how do you know about that?”

  “I had a hunch. I went there. I saw you, sir.”

  “Enough! This isn’t something we can do. We can’t even talk about it. Ever.” There was finality in my tone.

  Julie looked at me, her eyes big and round, her cheeks flushed. There was a tremor in her voice. This had taken courage for her to do, I had to hand her that. She wasn’t about to give up.

  “My marks are bad sir,” she said. “I want them to be better, I want to go to university. I need you to help me, to punish me when I’m bad, when I don’t do my work.”

  “Julie…”

  She didn’t let me finish. “I’ll be good for you sir, I’ll make it worth your while. I promise. I’ll do anything.” Her voice was pleading, desperate for help, desperate for acceptance.

  I looked away from her, looked out the window so I wouldn’t see her tight young body or her big, begging eyes. I took a deep breath and swallowed. What she was proposing might be legal, but the school district has a single rule for a situation like this. Hands off. It was up to me to be the mature one, the responsible one, to turn away from what this beautiful, intelligent, eager young woman was offering, to refuse to give her what she clearly needed so much. Her parents, the principle, my colleagues, the world at large, they all expected me to make the right decision here, to live up to the expected code of ethical conduct, to not take advantage of the situation. Just as I had with Suzanne.

  And would Suzanne be alive now if I’d kissed her, if I’d taken her, slept with her? Would she have enjoyed her teacher-fling and then gotten over it, gone on to her scholarships and her degree and her brilliant and successful future? Would she now be writing me a warm Christmas card, remembering what we had briefly shared, excitedly describing her new and expanding world? Or would it have ended in disaster, in heartbreak? It might have, but nothing could have been worse than what had really happened. The world at large didn’t have to bring flowers to the grave of a smart young woman who’d died for unrequited love. I’d apo
logized to Suzanne’s mother as though I’d done something wrong, and she’d looked at me and looked away and said “I wish…” She hadn’t finished, but I knew what she was wishing. She was wishing I had loved her daughter, if only for a little while, and thereby saved her life.

  I looked back to Julie, standing there, young and firm and waiting. Decision time and I really had no choice.

  “Be at my place, ten o’clock tonight. Be on time or don’t come. If you don’t come, if you’re not on time to the second, it’s over.” I looked her in the eyes. “Understand?”

  She shuddered. Did she climax at that moment? “Yes sir.”

  I jerked my head at the door and she ran out, not looking back. As she grabbed up her books I caught a glimpse of what she’d been reading while she should have been paying attention in class. A plain black cover with a single red rose, I knew that book. How many young women had their first look into their own sexuality through the eyes of its thrice-tested heroines? I looked down at my desk, put my head in my hands. What have I gotten into? It was wrong, and it would ruin me, but I couldn’t deny my desire to bend that lithe body to my will, to discipline that brilliant, undisciplined mind. My cock strained upwards at the thought. I felt guilt and desire, fear and lust. I can’t do this. The words ran through my mind in a permanent loop, but I was doing it.

  Or was I? I hadn’t expected Julie’s approach, I had no plan to deal with it, but I’d made one on the spot. Ten o’clock was a deliberate choice, not so late that she could protest it was an unfair time to meet, but late enough that her parents might stop her from going out. My phone number is unlisted, my address along with it. Smart teachers do that, to cut down on the prank phone calls and the toilet paper strewn all over the lawn. Students have dug it out before and I’m sure they will again, but she’d have only a few hours. If she didn’t figure it out in time I’d be able to end it cleanly before it began, save my career, save myself from the memory of Suzanne.